Brace yourselves: D.C. poised to torture rest of country whining over clumsily named snowstorm

posted at 10:21 pm on March 5, 2013 by Mary Katharine Ham

It’s predicted to snow maybe 5-8 inches in the capital tonight and tomorrow morning, and there’s a movement afoot to call if Snowquester. God, this place is the worst.

I wonder how many White House tours will be canceled in the face of this shocking amount of precipitation. Maybe it’ll be enough that we can save that money and transfer it to March, when the president’s specially designed Sequester Spite Cuts set in. Last time we had a crappily named snowstorm in the nation’s capital— Snowmageddon—the District of Columbia was effectively crippled for a week. And, yet, I seem to remember the rest of the country getting along pretty swimmingly during that time. Do you even remember when that snowstorm was? Did you feel a disturbance in the Force in December of 2009 and February of 2010? Probably not.

Sequester is the end of the world, but the heinously named Snowquester could shut down the federal government for a week, and the Washington Post will just run fun feature photos of lobbyists cross-country skiing on the Mall.

Snowquester is already leaving us unprepared for possible asteroid threats! (Update: Replaced the below Twitter link with one that works.)

House Science Comm cancels Wed hearing on asteroid threats because of #snowquester

Anyway, I warn you now, so you can prepare. Just as residents of the D.C. area empty the Trader Joe’s of staples like roasted red pepper hummus and kale, you must brace yourselves to be subjected to the melodramatic tweets and complaints of those who live in the seat of power.

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It’s predicted to snow maybe 5-8 inches in the capital tonight and tomorrow morning, and there’s a movement afoot to call if Snowquester
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Can you imagine how tense the whole nation will become as this news gets out?

So of us ..er them…inside the beltway may be unable to help with all the difficult challenges the nation faces every day. And, there may be injuries or deaths if the storm is bad enough and no hospitals and doctors or even ambulances with the sequester ongoing.

The citizens of the US will weep like the North Koreans and Venezuelans did when the maximum leaders passed into their everlasting glory.

Well, they can assuage their anxiety knowing that they have just under four years of President Obama’s Messianic and complete love and dedication left.

But perhaps it will be a comfort unto you that those who dwell in D.C., capriciously wielding power far beyond their skills, by turns impotent and destructive but rarely helpful…they have a power company that does the same thing.

reminds me of that short a$$ mayor of yours, Allah….. The fella that can’t plow snow but he can sure the hell plow salt and take your soda.

Five to eight inches really isn’t that much. I’m in NoVa right across the river from DC, and several years ago we got like three feet. Then four days later we got another three. Even that wasn’t that big a deal. I’m still a bit skeptical though. Today it was like Spring outside, barely a cloud in the sky, and there’s still no sign of anything yet at the moment. Snow would have to call for a pretty sudden and radical change of weather.

Guess I should have bought more beer though, just in case. I may have to grab my “assault weapon” and use it to steal the beer of others.

At 7:00 last night, with not even a flake of snow in the air yet, Washington area drivers were piddling along at 15 mph under the speed limit, as if we already had 6 or 7 inches of snow on the roads. Morons.

I’d rather have the 84F of Dallas (even with a 70F dew point!) than the cold and snow — but I also have a Buffalo-quality Toro snow thrower that’ll remove a foot of snow like a Democrat can kick a can down the street into the next election cycle.

What we have as of right now is about an inch of pre-slush. Anyone who knows the Buffalo region knows about slush: that frigid mix of wet snow with water that isn’t really snow but isn’t really ready to drain off the streets, either. We started with a base of rain from yesterday, then added snow into the mix (it’s falling slush from the heavens!) and now have these big, white, fluffy, barely snow flakes to coat the top half-inch and make everything look all Christmasy until, of course, you take a step in it and your foot slides an inch or so once you reach a solid surface.

I can handle snow… easily! Love the fact that real snow tends to stay where you want it to go.

Rain water is a snap, just let it run to where it wants to go and make sure you are above a thousand year flood mark. Simple.

Slush?

You can plow it off the streets leaving you water just at the freezing mark. Add a light breeze and you get: black ice. Black ice is that thin layer of ice that sits just on top of blacktop and is just barely thick enough to make your car skid out on a gentle turn at 30mph. You can’t see it as it isn’t that glossy type of ice, but matte and at best looks like a dull glaze when you can see it at all. A touch of sand or salt on the roads is the trick for this stuff, until you have to plow it off, of course, due to slush build-up….

Thus we have a few days of slush predicted with random patches of black ice to follow, all while a few big, fluffy, happy, water-laden flakes come down to sneer at us. And build up on tree limbs. Which will then proceed to snap and take out power in some areas, this being a metro region, and all, they don’t really see fit to do the preventative tricks of clearing tree limbs and figure that black-outs are just random acts of nature you really shouldn’t try to avoid.

Anyone with experience can tell you these things. The way it is actually treated tells you of the deep-derangement that goes on and the denial that this isn’t the Old South of Yore but the modern mid-Atlantic of Insanity and Nearsightedness.

Yeah, stay off the roads until you really, and for true, need to go out for something that is worth risking your life for. This is the season of weather this year, so just wait a few days and we will then go back to mid-40’s to 50’s and 60’s for a day and a half and then back down to 30 to 35 for a day and a half, with mixes of snow, open skies, rain, slush, etc. happening more or less randomly. Right now its snow on slush. Wait a couple of days. Something worse will come along.

Naming the weather every time it rains or snows a lot is nuts, but then look who’s doing it. Where’s the agw protesters?

Kissmygrits on March 6, 2013 at 8:25 AM

“Snowquester” is kind of a tongue in cheek thing — in the tradition of “Snowmageddon” a couple of others. I think MK mischaracterized it as a “movement” it first showed up in local blogs and is entirely unofficial. Even the regular news doesn’t seem to be using it.

OMG, I’m snowed in. It’s horrible, why there must be 2 or 3 inches of that stuff on my deck. The world surely is coming to an end. How’m I doin’ can I be a Senator now? Seriously I’ve walked to school in worse than this, uphill both ways of course. As far as driving. Anyone who couldn’t get around in this shouldn’t have a driver’s license. That’s not a bad idea it would solve most of NOVAs traffic problems if the idiots around here couldn’t get licenses. That way the only folks on the roads would be decent drivers and illegal aliens.

Oh, I live in Spotsylvania county about 50 miles south of D.C. It’s snowing but the temperature is about 35 degrees and not predicted to dip much below 32 in the next few days. It’s supposedly going to snow the rest of today and into the night. Tomorrow’s high is predicted to be 42 and sunny with increasing temperatures through to Sunday. Sunday’s high in the low 60s. Everything in this area has been cancelled.

I’m in Northern Virginia, just a few miles outside DC. What’s coming down is basically light wet snow. Another few degrees warmer and it would be ordinary rain. There is snow coating the grass, but it isn’t sticking to the roads or the sidewalks, and I haven’t seen or heard one snowplow drive by.

Yeah, this is yet another DC area blizzard that fell short of expectations. We seem to get one of those every winter. But then the drivers around here tend to get awfully nervous whenever it snows at all.